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Steve's Google Platform rant

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Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#301

Post by [deleted] »

bambax wrote: post #55
revorad wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really shocked to read that (and the OP's rant about Amazon). Of course, I've never had a corporate job. It amazes me that Amazon managed to be so successful, despite treating their employees so badly.

Yes, that's kind of interesting, isn't it? If those horror stories are true (and we have no reason to doubt they are), it kinda shows that the way you treat your employees doesn't really matter to your success. It certainly matters a lot to them; it matters from a moral point of view; but from a practical point of view the only individuals whose happiness matters are the customers. Of course, if your employees are so…

[deleted]

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#302

Post by potatolicious »

mun2mun wrote: post #275
nirvana wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still periodically try out some of the regression tests that I'd done back when I worked there... there are bugs that have been in the site for about 4 years now. I think when my team was reduced by %90 from people leaving, they just disbanded it and nobodies doing that work now. Certainly the major initiatives haven't moved forward. I don't think Bezos has a technical background... I thought he was a hedge fund gu…

I don't think Bezos has a technical background... I thought he was a hedge fund guy before moving out to Seattle. So what can you say about this post posted here 3 years ago. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=465882 . The blog post was down, archive.org didn't help also :). But as far as I remember the blogger was praising about bezos leadership skill. Also comments on HN supported that. I am reading HN for about 3…

I had the fortunate opportunity to present to Bezos once. That guy is sharp as a tack - asked some very tough, but fair questions, all of which suggested he got what we were presenting and grokked at least the bulk of the technology underlying it. It was not at all a "uh huh that's nice go do it" scenario at all, and I was pleasantly surprised.

He may not write code, but I think it would be a mistake to claim he isn't a technologist.

If the rest of the company's management had half the managerial competence of Jeff Bezos, I'd run back to that company with arms wide open.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#303

Post by simplekoala »

bambax wrote: post #55
revorad wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really shocked to read that (and the OP's rant about Amazon). Of course, I've never had a corporate job. It amazes me that Amazon managed to be so successful, despite treating their employees so badly.

Yes, that's kind of interesting, isn't it? If those horror stories are true (and we have no reason to doubt they are), it kinda shows that the way you treat your employees doesn't really matter to your success. It certainly matters a lot to them; it matters from a moral point of view; but from a practical point of view the only individuals whose happiness matters are the customers. Of course, if your employees are so…

I kind of agree. They are at a stage, where their treatment of developers doesn't matter much. Walmart treats it employees miserably but they are doing quite well, and rakes ginormous profits. The way a company treats its employees says a lot about management. Amazon's top level management is super sharp. They are not idiots. It is not like they don't get it. The fact is they don't give a shit. As long as you are a success story, no-one really cares. If it ain't broken don't fix it. If there is an objective way to measure developer happiness across all top tech-companies, I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon ends up dead last.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#304

Post by TruthPrevails »

skyo wrote: post #288
TruthPrevails wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My AWS team was good. I enjoyed my work as an intern. However I was warned that work in the group is operations intensive. I could see that myself in those 12 weeks. As an intern I was not given any operations work. Obviously it will change when I join as a full timer. As noted below I am looking at other AWS teams, Kindle silk browser team. I need to find out about these teams.

Yeah, I've heard that some AWS teams can have heavy operational load. If it's important to you to avoid that, you could consider somewhere in WAP/BuilderTools. That's where I work (so yes I am biased), and in my experience the operational load tends to be pretty light throughout the org. On my particular team we almost never get paged. Plus we get to build neat things in this org (remember how Stevey mentioned that A…

Just now found out that "no college hires" in Silk team. That sucks! College hires are high on energy and enthusiasm. I don't know why teams would not want college hires :(

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#305

Post by simplekoala »

ryanpers wrote: post #235
praptak wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"On the contrary, the way Amazon treats their employees does harm them substantially, they just haven't paid the price visibly to the public (or quite as hard as they will, eventually)." If it hasn't hit them yet, it might after the rant. Given the Dilbert Employer From Hell publicity generated by the rant and the subsequent discussion, I'd say that they might have trouble filling in for the people that leave. Heck,…

Locally in Seattle, Amazon has a really bad rep. Only on places like hackernews where everyone is excited about AWS (despite its many, huge, annoying flaws, remember when ebs when down - AGAIN?) do people not realize this. Amazon has lost a lot of key tech talent, it's been happening since about 2006 when the economy picked up a lot more.

Seems like only people in Seattle, and Ex-Amazonians have a clue about working for Amazon. Don't be surprised if HN trolls down-vote your comments out of sheer ignorace.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#306

Post by rryan »

chubs wrote: post #58

My first thought when reading was 'wow, he must be confident about how open to criticism the bosses at google are, to be posting this'. And now i've come back a few hours later to find his post has been removed... Let's hope he was right when he claimed he could easily get a job at facebook, for his mortgage's sake :)

Being able to level criticisms at anyone within the company is one of Google's great cultural strengths. At no point would you ever be fired for having an opinion and expressing it loudly. A long rant to all of engineering CC'd to Larry Page is pretty common and often unleashes many centi-threads of discussion.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#307

Post by simplekoala »

mun2mun wrote: post #275
nirvana wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still periodically try out some of the regression tests that I'd done back when I worked there... there are bugs that have been in the site for about 4 years now. I think when my team was reduced by %90 from people leaving, they just disbanded it and nobodies doing that work now. Certainly the major initiatives haven't moved forward. I don't think Bezos has a technical background... I thought he was a hedge fund gu…

I don't think Bezos has a technical background... I thought he was a hedge fund guy before moving out to Seattle. So what can you say about this post posted here 3 years ago. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=465882 . The blog post was down, archive.org didn't help also :). But as far as I remember the blogger was praising about bezos leadership skill. Also comments on HN supported that. I am reading HN for about 3…

PR war? Check out Amazon Glassdoor reviews for engineers! This sentiment has been consistent. I am a little surprised that people were praising Amazon's culture here. This also explains I was down-voted in the past. One thing I really learnt well at Amazon was how not to treat your developers, and what mistakes you shouldn't make to build great, and long-lasting teams.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#308

Post by simplekoala »

nirvana wrote: post #84
potatolicious wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, the way Amazon treats their employees does harm them substantially, they just haven't paid the price visibly to the public (or quite as hard as they will, eventually). Attrition at Amazon is at horrific rates. I know the actual number, though I'm pretty sure that'd violate my NDA to reveal. It's high. It's really high. Guess a really truly terrible number. It's probably higher than that. The stream o…

I still periodically try out some of the regression tests that I'd done back when I worked there... there are bugs that have been in the site for about 4 years now. I think when my team was reduced by %90 from people leaving, they just disbanded it and nobodies doing that work now. Certainly the major initiatives haven't moved forward. I don't think Bezos has a technical background... I thought he was a hedge fund gu…

Do you guys remember the contraptions they stuck on the laptop's for secure logins/VPN? Made me the butt of all jokes, carrying that thing around..Sigh

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#309

Post by simplekoala »

nirvana wrote: post #59
bambax wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's kind of interesting, isn't it? If those horror stories are true (and we have no reason to doubt they are), it kinda shows that the way you treat your employees doesn't really matter to your success. It certainly matters a lot to them; it matters from a moral point of view; but from a practical point of view the only individuals whose happiness matters are the customers. Of course, if your employees are so…

Amazon internal propagand emphasizes that Amazon is a startup. "It's day one!" is a phrase I heard way too many times. They have "door desks" -- which actually cost them more than regular off the shelf furniture would-- but they pretend like they're being frugal to perpetuate the perception that they're a startup. (When I found out about the door desks costs, I was sworn to secrecy, it is very important for morale.)…

You last few statement sum up my feelings too. I am curious to see, how long they can get away with poor conditions for Devs. It still amazes me that they get away with it.

Re: Steve's Google Platform rant

#310

Post by lamnk »

nostrademons wrote: post #269
lamnk wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh, I think you are mistaking between open source and being a platform here. A platform need not to be open source.

But all the same issues apply, i.e. if you can't disentangle your code from proprietary interfaces enough to open-source it, you probably will not be able to put a service API on it that third-party programmers will be able to use without a lot of handholding. (And Google doesn't do handholding, as just about everyone knows by now.)

No, it's not the same issues. I'm not a programmer, but I know that offering a well designed API to a service has nothing to do with its code being closed or not.

When I was learning to program, I was very interested in 3 Google's core products API: Search, Adsense and Adwords but got turned off because their APIs are very crippled. I understand that Google do not want to expose their core products (cash cows) to abuse, however that's exactly what Steve argued in parent's quote. If the closeness (nothing to do with code) is already in Google's mindset, how do they become a "platform oriented company"? Steve says that it will take a dramatic cultural change to catch up. Steve also chooses Amazon's example to prove: when the years of explosive growth were over, Jeff Bezos had to think of some new expansion strategies. He was betting on the cloud, whatever that means, or on being a platform, and he implemented his vision with an iron fist, because paradigm shift is hard, you have to consistently push people into doing it.

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